21. Dead roosters & plumed hens
A year after his impressive Skate, Ensor painted another animal: a Dead Cockerel. The work has a theatrical air about it: a slaughtered rooster hangs from a rope like a trophy, the white canvas resembles a stage curtain. The Baroque allure is reminiscent of 17th-century game still lifes. Artists like Frans Snijders used it to depict noble and even royal settings at the time: with hunting as a privilege of the aristocracy and eating game as the pinnacle of refinement.
However, in Ensor's version the whole scene resembles a recipe for a steaming pot of stew. All the ingredients are there: onion, garlic, leek, cabbage, some fruit and a fresh rooster! Note the underside as well: the black border that usually frames the work in a traditional Baroque still life is an explosion of colour in Ensor's example.
Ensor, who was almost 35 years old at the time, was at the beginning of a more decorative period. He had become aware of the compositions that would do well, and repeated them several times. The plucked, raw chicken with the blue bottle is one of those works he repeated in around 1905, a quarter of a century after the original. Another 20 years later, the combination reappears. A tried and tested recipe, no doubt as good as the stew being prepared here.
Once you have visited this room, leave it through the same door by which you entered. The exhibition continues with the modernism room, diagonally to the right, marked with the number 4.